I feel lucky for us to have arrived in Salt Lake City safely. The Snow Hailnado we encountered on much of our drive through snowy Wyoming mountains caused the most treacherous driving conditions I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve driven through plenty of Midwestern blizzards. Visibility was awful. Snowplows were nonexistent. And thick ice kept coating our windshield wipers, necessitating frequent stops to scrape the ice. I’m so grateful to have had my fellow driver Mary with me, and can’t imagine having tackled the day without her.
Every day each of us discovers what our new realities look like as we navigate our new restrictions. For example, at our Salt Lake City hotel tonight, our traveling party of five was told that no more than five people can occupy the lobby at once. We had to decide who was going to stand back out in the blustery wind so that room could be made for the hotel clerk or random passers-by.
The former buffet breakfast is now served in individual bags, which only five people can grab at one time. Our fellow guests offered us knowing smiles as we attempted to give each other wide berths in the hotel’s narrow hallways, as if it were imperative that we not share the same Utah air. I caught myself imagining each person’s story — are they all on their way home, too? Were they as freaked out about all of this as we are? I would love to have asked them these questions, but I was in a hurry to collapse into my (also narrow) double bed, and those hallways weren’t wide enough to afford us what once might have seemed an everyday chat.
Tonight Mary and I agreed that we really could have done with a bottle of wine. Instead, we settled for Door Dash noodles and a rousing game of Taboo, which Truman had packed. Tomorrow I deliver Mary to the Salt Lake City airport for her flight home to Denver, upon which time I will drive the 663 miles back to Davis. We’re returning to the temperate springtime of California, all of whose citizens were ordered today to Shelter in Place, something unfathomable just a few days ago. I don’t think I have ever felt so eager to return home to my own private shelter, and to see my guys and Margot.
Just as rainclouds in California become snow squalls in Wyoming, so has the epidemic become an even more deadly pandemic since Truman and I left our golden state at the beginning of this week. As a “hot spot,” the Sacramento Valley may be more “hot” to the touch than anyplace else I have visited in our cross-country trip this week, but there is still no place that I would rather call my sanctuary than back in the arms of my husband and back within at least waving distance of many of you.
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